India’s market swelled by $800 billion as investors flocked to a nation where the government boosted consumption through a job-guarantee plan. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

London: India is now home to the world’s eighth-biggest stock market, overtaking Canada for the first time in almost a decade. The score: India $2.29 trillion, Canada $2.28 trillion.

Mumbai’s total stock market capitalization hasn’t exceeded Toronto’s since 21 January 2008, when the S&P BSE Sensex plunged as concern grew that a global financial crisis was taking hold. Since then, India’s market swelled by $800 billion as investors flocked to a nation where the government boosted consumption through a job-guarantee plan, streamlined the indirect tax system and opened more industries to foreigners.

Until recently, Canada retained its lead, spurred by a bigger rally in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus package. The tables turned only this year, when the Sensex advanced six times as much as the S&P/TSX Composite Index on optimism over India’s policy changes.

In Canada this year, meantime, energy stocks dropped 13% amid oil-price fluctuations and concern new pipelines won’t get built. The industry makes up about 20% of the equity benchmark. Bloomberg